How to offer advice and not get slapped

Basically, don't be an insufferable git

There’s one in every crowd. The pompous sort who can’t stop doling out advice on every topic under the sun, moon and stars. In my life, there’s the man who tells me what’s wrong with mybarbecue (gas, not charcoal), cheesecake (baked, not frozen), driver (too slow), children (too surly), dogs (too friendly), business (too broke), wine (too cheap) and wife (too married). Not all at the same time, I grant you. But with a certain regularity that ensures there’s a steady stream of complaints with a host of solutions being offered alongside. Don’t get me wrong. I am all in favour of asking for advice, and even offering it. It’s the unsolicited sort with which I have a problem.

I also have a series of subjects on which you never, ever, comment. No matter how much you feel the need. You never tell someone how to bring up their children, not even if the little bastards are smearing jam tarts into the priceless rug your great-grandmother brought back from Persia. Much as you’d like to tell their mother that military school would be the right place to park them, you just suck it up and suffer in silence.

And dogs. Mine are perfectly well behaved, have never bitten a soul and, apart from a tendency to vacuum up any food within reach, are delightful company. So you do not walk into my house and ask why the dogs are on the couch. They are on the couch because it is their bloody house, and their bloody couch. If you don’t want dog hair on your pants, feel free to stand.

But if you’re going to offer advice regardless, you need to first be sure that you know what you’re talking about. So it might help to actually work out a list of things on which you could be considered an authority. No one’s going to take you seriously on single malt if you’re a teetotaller. Or worse, drink only rum and coke. But if, over time, people around you learn to acknowledge that you do know what you’re talking about, like a doctor who’s asked to offer free consultations at a party, you’ll be the person to whom people turn. There is a certain satisfaction in having someone say “let’s ask him”, and have the room fall silent while you ponder your answer.

Whatever you do, don’t waffle. Have an opinion. Someone calls you and asks what you think of bow ties, you should be ready to point out that unless the dress code calls for a dinner jacket or the person enquiring is a middle-aged English professor in Minnesota, the answer is a clear and unqualified no.

The downside to being the go-to guy for topics like this of course is that you soon get inundated with silly requests. Like the time I had someone send me a series of messages about the price of every possible variant of wine in Mumbai’s stores. I answered the first few politely. Then finally had to be rude and suggest the asker might be better served walking into a liquor store than wasting my time with text after text.

Let’s face it. In an age when the answer to any question is just a search on a smartphone away, it shouldn’t be hard to offer the right advice. If you’re person, it’s a not in the presence of the simple matter of Googling what you need to say. This works for all topics ranging from the capital of Slovenia to the right speakers to buy for a high-end home theatre.

Advice to women, though? Just don’t. For starters, no gentleman would ever presume to tell a lady how to dress. No matter what she wears, she is perfect. And if you haven’t learned to say that convincingly after all these years, it’s probably why you haven’t had a lasting relationship and are still living with your mother. Only another woman can give her the validation she seeks, whether it’s on the length of her hair or her dress. She doesn’t really want your opinion. She’s just making you feel like you matter. But here lies the rub. You don’t. And that, alas, is one of those things you don’t discover on Google.